Institutionally embedded racism grows out of institutional crisis rather than isolated bad actors

Evidence

Although the institutional crisis may have some connection with racism, it would be wrong to generalize and reduce it to the image of “good” institutions which have been affected by external circumstances as a result of the pressure of wider social difficulties, and which have a few “bad apples” in their midst who may go as far as racist remarks, attitudes, or behavior. Institutions are more likely to become racist when they are themselves in difficulty, either because they are not in a position to offer their personnel reasonable employment, pay, and career prospects, or because they are paralyzed or destabilized by excessive endeavors to modernize, or by unexpectedly being held responsible for economic constraints, and being faced with the old organizational culture, and in particular because they are incapable of clearly stating the very meaning of their own mission, the values and the norms to be respected to ensure their own legitimacy. Contexts of this type create conditions which are propitious to the spread of racism; someone has to bear the blame and the crisis is attributed to immigrants, and racist behavior on the part of the agents who ensure the working of the institutions is allowed or tolerated. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3161

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to organizational sociology accounts of institutional racism (e.g. the Macpherson report’s institutional racism concept) and to the reader’s prior material on how crises generate scapegoating.
• DEEPTHINKING: Turns the conventional ‘bad apple’ explanation of institutional racism on its head: institutions become racist when destabilized by modernization pressure, funding constraints, and mission ambiguity — a genuinely structural account that resists easy summary.